


Condoms Like A Rosary

by gala_apples



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Car Sex, Other, Penance - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 02:37:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/947599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oz owes Devon, and this is the way he pays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Condoms Like A Rosary

Oz knows how much he owes Devon. It would be a source of stress, if he was the sort of person to stress out. He’s not though, or at least he tries not to be. There’s no situation that is helped by getting anxious. You don’t have to know about the Hellmouth to know that, though seeing Giles and Xander and Willow take on an apocalypse with relative calm helps prove the point.

When Oz was a kid he’d been enrolled in all possible sports. God knows what his parents were thinking. Perhaps trying to instil a sense of normalcy in their strange son. Oz never had a rebellious turning point. He didn’t snap at fifteen and start dyeing his hair and painting his nails and listening to glam rock. He’s always been this way, always been weird. And his parents have always made it clear that they don't understand him, nor do they want to. It’s why MOO had worked so perfectly last year; Betty Osbourne didn't need a campaign to strive for the mundane.

He still has a clear memory of meeting Devon. Oz had been seven, and he just couldn’t get the hang of not breathing through his nose in the pool. Most of the class had been given free time, but he’d had to stay on the side of the pool with water wings and a flutterboard as the instructor made him practice putting his face in the water again and again. That’s when Devon deliberately peed while going down the slide. The pool got shut down for the day. Oz wasn’t doing anything except drying off in silent relief when Devon walked by and said _you’re welcome_. A month later he’d done it three more times, and Oz’s mom took him out of swimming lessons because of the constant unsanitary conditions. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 

Devon rescuing him through obnoxiousness from situations Oz can’t make his way out of through apathy and dry humour was the normal state of affairs up through junior high. It wasn’t a constant thing, often enough they could just play music or sit silently in class. There were only so many things his parents could sign him up for. But when Oz needed it, Devon did his thing. He got him out of basketball by dropping the ball down his shorts and rubbing it all over his junk. He got him out of badminton by ripping the net after trying to use it as a hammock. And in what was probably his most impressive showing, he got Oz out of baseball. Baseball is Oz’s least favourite sport. It always has been, and it always will be. He can’t help but flinch at a baseball coming at him, and everyone knows a flinch reaction from Oz is running away screaming at the top of your lungs from anyone else. He’d flinched, and Devon had seen it. So using some of the words he had picked up from from older cousins, Devon had begun a detailed rant about how stupid baseball players were and any douchenozzle knew you got out of the way of flying objects coming towards you. By purposely enraging the coaches not only did they avoid any group oriented activity, they also managed to strike up a record of being cool. 

Now it’s freshman year, and while Oz sincerely hopes all sports are out of his life for good, he’s still got problems. Oz doesn’t understand whole the sex with girls thing. It seems popular, and not the kind of massively approved behaviour he’s going to be able to avoid. Eventually, when Oz can’t stand musing about it any longer, he gets Devon really high then explains his confusion. He doesn’t want to lose his virginity. It’s a social construct he isn’t sure he believes in, but he can’t know if he believes in it until he’s immersed in the loss of it. It’s a seemingly spiralled problem. 

Devon looks at the cloud cover the entire conversation, but he’s listening to every word, Oz is sure of it. Devon’s the only guy that ever listens to him, cares enough to ask him his theories about life.

“So you don’t want to get laid but you want to understand laying?”

Oz kisses him. Devon pulls away and continues. “So what you’re trying to say is you’re not really sure how to get with a girl. I can totally show you. I’ll let you watch the next time I hook up.”

That’s not what Oz meant at all. But that’s what Devon needs him to mean, and for once he wants to do what Devon needs. Acting out the lie can be repayment for all the times Devon has helped him. It can be penance for all the times Devon got in trouble for helping him and Oz couldn’t or didn’t get him out of it.

The first girl that agrees to let Oz watch is hot, objectively speaking. He sits facing backward in the passenger seat of the girl’s band van and watches them have sex in the back where the amps and instruments should go. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that he’s on his knees with his hands clasped at his chest. Watching this does feel like a prayer, as well as the only way he’s going to get forgiveness.

Afterwards, walking home from the Bronze Devon turns to him and asks, “did you get what you needed to?”

More accurately, has he paid enough yet? Oz doesn’t think so. You don’t just condense eight years to one evening.

“Can we just...do this until I say I don’t need to?”

And because Devon is such a good man, he agrees to continue to make Oz pay, without even realising that’s what he’s doing.

One thing that Oz can say for Devon is that he certainly doesn’t have a type. He’s heard that people get stuck in ruts, all blond women or tall men. Devon’s somehow immune to that social rule, just like he is to every other rule. There’s a tall girl against a wall, blending in while arching. A short girl who can nearly stand in the van. A anorexic girl, bruising him with unpadded elbows. A drunk girl who insists on doggy style in case she needs to puke out the window. A spun girl who gnaws on her lip and dances to music playing only in her head. A fat girl with curves and pouches.

He loses count, eventually. Like a person with an eternal string of rosary beads, Oz does the same thing over and over again. He knows one day it’ll solve all his problems.


End file.
